If you've been on the studying side of social media, I'm sure you've heard of active recall. Active recall is a very popular learning technique in which you try to retrieve information from memory without looking at any materials/notes. Instead of passively reviewing your notes, you are actively challenging yourself and testing your knowledge by trying to recall information without any help. 

Active recall is a great way to study for upcoming tests, because as a test taker, you are asked to retrieve information from scratch. Here's how I incorporated active recall studying into my AP Biology exam studying routine.

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1) Write down every single unit in blue

Ap Biology has 8 units, so I wrote down the names of each of the 8 units in a single column in blue.

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2) Write down all the subtopics in blue

In blue again, I wrote down every single subtopic (meaning smaller topics; photosynthesis wouldn't be counted as a subtopic, but the formula for photosynthesis would) for each unit in a row, using my notes for reference. This took awhile, because there are many topics in each unit of AP Biology.

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3) Print/duplicate your work

We plan on repeating this process multiple times, so if you wrote down the topics on paper, print out a copy for reference. If you wrote it in your iPad, duplicate the document.

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4) Write down EVERYTHING you know

Without the help of any resources, under each subtopic, write down everything you know about the subtopic. So, for example, if my subtopic was the process of photosynthesis, I would draw a detailed diagram of the process of photosynthesis, start to finish, color-coded with labels. You want to act like you are teaching someone who knows NOTHING about the topic, so be as specific as possible.

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5) Color code

This is just what I do; you don't need to follow the exact setup I use. When writing down information (step 4), I usually realize that there are certain topics I know more about than others. So, to keep track of this, I would write down everything I found easy in green; everything I found slightly challenging in yellow; and everything I had no clue about in red. 

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6) Review review REVIEW

Using your color coding, do a quick skim over everything you found easy; a brief review on everything you found slightly challenging; and search up YouTube videos, take notes, and spend the most time and effort on the subtopics you had no clue about.

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7) Repeat

Using your duplicated "worksheet" from step 3, repeat all over again until you are comfortable with most of the subtopics

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Thank you so much for taking your time to read this blog post. I hope you learnt something useful!

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